Hiring kitchen staff has never been easy. In 2026, it’s even tougher.
With high turnover, rising wages, and ongoing skills shortages across Australia’s hospitality industry, one bad hire can cost you weeks of lost productivity, stressed teams, and unhappy customers.
This guide breaks down the five most common mistakes venue owners make when hiring kitchen staff, and what to do instead if you want a reliable, motivated team without wasting time or money.
Posting on large job boards might feel like the obvious move, but they’re not built for real kitchen hiring.
Most employers experience:
A flood of irrelevant applications
Candidates with no genuine kitchen experience
No insight into work ethic, reliability, or kitchen fit
You end up spending hours filtering resumes instead of running your venue.
What to do instead:
Use hospitality-focused platforms that let you filter candidates by kitchen role, cuisine experience, availability, and work rights. Targeted hiring saves time and leads to better matches.
Resumes look polished. Interviews sound convincing. Kitchens reveal the truth.
Skipping a trial shift is one of the biggest hiring mistakes in hospitality. Without seeing someone work, you won’t know:
How fast they prep
How they handle pressure
How they communicate with the team
Whether they fit your kitchen flow
What to do instead:
Always offer a paid trial shift, even if it’s short. Structure the interview, then test the candidate in real service conditions. One hour in the kitchen is worth more than any resume.
Technical skills get food out. Soft skills keep the kitchen running.
Many kitchens fail not because of skill gaps, but because of:
Poor communication
Ego clashes
Inability to take feedback
Panic during busy service
Strong candidates usually show:
Accountability
Calmness under pressure
Clear communication
Willingness to learn
What to do instead:
Hire for attitude first and skills second. Skills can be trained. Behaviour usually can’t.
Unclear work rights create delays, disruptions, and compliance risks.
If this isn’t discussed early, you may face:
Delayed start dates
Sudden staff loss
Unexpected operational gaps
What to do instead:
Confirm work rights early in the hiring process. Use verified hiring platforms where this information is clearly shown so there are no surprises later.
Good kitchen staff don’t stay available for long.
If your hiring process drags out, strong candidates will accept offers elsewhere.
Best-practice timelines:
Respond to applications within 24–48 hours
Schedule interviews within 3 days
Make a clear yes or no decision within 48 hours after the trial
Speed shows professionalism. Hesitation loses talent.
Avoiding these mistakes becomes easier when hiring follows a clear system, which is outlined step by step in our ultimate guide to hiring kitchen staff in Australia.
If you’ve hired the wrong chef before, you know how quickly things can go wrong. Prep suffers, teams get frustrated, service quality drops, and revenue follows.
When you hire well, everything improves. Kitchens run smoother, morale lifts, and customers notice the difference.
Platforms like Venture Uplift help venue owners hire smarter by giving access to hospitality-ready candidates, free job posting tools, and filters by role, experience, availability, and work rights.
You can post a kitchen job for free and connect directly with candidates who are ready to work.
